Most Americans never think about the “unitary executive theory.” Why would they? It’s a niche constitutional idea usually debated by scholars, not shouted at rallies. But Donald Trump dragged it out of the law journals and turned it into a kind of political weapon — a way to claim powers the Constitution doesn’t give him and to convince millions of people that he’s entitled to them. So let’s start where this actually begins: what the theory says, and what it doesn’t. The unitary executive theory is about one thing only — the president’s control over the Executive Branch. Not Congress. Not the courts. Not state governments. Not elections. Not criminal accountability. Even the strongest version of the theory only argues that the president should have broad authority to direct and remove executive officers. That’s it. A narrow debate about how the president oversees the federal bureaucracy. But Trump treats the theory like a constitutional permission slip for presidential...
Not a Democrat or Republican. Not Liberal and not Conservative. I am an Independent American: Follow me on Bluesky, I-Could-Be-Wrong, Written by David P